Craigs List

When it comes to marketing real estate on the internet there are a lot of ways to get some great exposure without having to spend any money to do it.

If you are an agent who is either broke or working with a very small budget, you will have no excuses to get the ball rolling again once you read this article.

First and foremost I have to say that before you start talking about bringing people to your website, you must make sure the website is ready for traffic.

No sense driving people to a website that will not capture their contact info. Here are a couple of tips to make sure the site will have the best chance for success when you drive visitors to it.

Get the main lead capturing tools of the website to the middle of the home page. Those tools normally are a 1. home search 2. auto email sign up 3. cma request. Sell your home search as "Search 5,000 listings in San Antonio click here" or even more descrptive. Do Not showcase that feature by having a 2 word button on the left that just says "home search". Bring the text and the feature to the main section of your website. It also helps to have some local photos, links and information on the community underneath that as well since many folks want to know more about where they are moving. I have another post on RISMEDIA.com that goes more into real estate websites, but let's get to the marketing part of this article for now.

FREE places first to get some good exposure for your website and real estate business.

1. Online classifieds - This is a huge and growing business model that is killing print ad publishers around the country. In San Diego, for example, Craigslist.com has many more ads in it than our main San Diego newspaper and while Craigslist grows multifold the San Diego Union continues to shrink. Their loss is your gain since you can advertise your listings in Craigslist.com for free. You can also post for FREE in:

backpage.com

Google Base

HotPads

Kijiji

LiveDeal

Oodle

Trulia

Vast

Zillow and others

Make sure you SAVE YOUR AD so you can re-submit it when it expires in these online classified sections. I always save ads in "notepad", since "word" can mess up any HTML you have.

When making your ad MAKE SURE that just under the info that you have on the listing you also have a "search for homes" link on there. The real goal of the ad for me is to gather enough interest on a listing to click on the ad and then get them to go to a full MLS home search from there. Craigslist will flag ads that do not have listings and are home search ads only. If you do not have a listing, then throw in some listings from other agents and friends in the office. The more ads you can input the better. The goal is to take 45 minutes for 2 weeks and create about 14 ads. Once you have copies of 14 ads then you have a sufficient amount "in storage" to work with. Most ads for listings run 1-2 weeks. Craigslist.com may only last for a week so if you have 14 ads in your file you can drop 2 a day in there and just recycle them until the listing sells.

Is craigslist powerful? Good question - Here are "the facts" as they list them off their website

CRAIGSLIST.COM Facts:

The site serves over nine billion page views per month, putting it in 56th place overall among web sites world wide, ninth place overall among web sites in the United States (per Alexa.com on January 10, 2008), to over thirty million unique visitors. With over thirty million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over two million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world.

As of September 2007, Craigslist had established itself in approximately 450 cities in 50 countries.

One thing for sure is that Craigslist.com is growing and not shrinking along with these other online classifieds.

If you are an agent with a small budget then invest your time tapping into online classifieds.

GOLD NUGGETT: Okay so some of you are saying "how do I create a good ad"?

Go to www.postlets.com and they will provide a step by step walk through that will create a PROFESSIONAL web based ad for FREE, plus you also get listed in the Postlets.com directory for free. If you are not running to your computer to go drop an ad in Craigslist.com right now then you are crazy!

Postlets is EASY and if you are in a slump with no business, then create 30-50 ads like I do and get your business in gear! -

2. Get Listed in Directories -

You know the old saying "the more places people can find you the better"?

Well if you are like me you want to make sure that you try to get as much exposure for as little $$$ as possible. In addition to online classifieds there are also "online directories" that will list your business in their search results. Some of the BEST directories to get listed in are Google and Yellowbook.com. There are also normally 3-4 more local directories in each local market that you can also get listed in if you take the time to track them down. Normally you can go to Google and type in "san diego business directory" or other related terms to find websites that will provide a free business listing. The best part with most of these directories is that they only need to be renewed yearly and not weekly like classified ads.

3. Myspace.com

If you are going to make money with a tight budget then Myspace.com is also a viable media tool to create business and exposure. I have had great success with Myspace.com but I will caution you to understand that is takes time to make Myspace.com productive. When you have a FREE Myspace.com page you will want to make sure that you put links from your main website on it. The page has little value if people cannot search for homes, sign up for auto email or do a CMA, so make sure you put that on there in addition to local photos of the area etc...the more photos, the more people that will come to your page and want to add you as friends. The main value of Myspace.com comes in the form of "how many friends" do I have. You need to (or get your kids to do it) add as many friends as possible to your account. You can target zip codes, age ranges, married or not etc...so make sure you get friends from zip codes where sales are or listings are coming from. In addition go outside the area and "add other agents" and build a Myspace.com referral network.

Myspace.com works, it is not a question of "Does Myspace.com work"? Of course it does, it has boasted being the most visited website on the planet and with 200 million online visitors and growing, it is something you need to look at. I would say that you need to get around 1,000 plus friends to start getting the thing going, but it is worth it and the sooner you can get at least just a page up the better. You need to develop a good banner with a link to your real estate website and make sure when you are "added as a friend", you go back to that Myspace.com page and post it in their comments section.

If you can get your banner into 40-50 or 100+ Myspace.com pages with links back to your website, then you will start seeing some traffic coming and interest in your profile.

Normally it takes 6 months to a year to get those accounts going strong, but it is worth it when you do. These online resources that I have talked about are growing expodentially so it makes sense to look at these as an additional source of revenue for your business.

In a time when marketing budgets can be thin, these are very effective ways to help get your business in front of a growing number of visitors using these online resourses!

Remember the MORE TIME YOU INVEST THE BETTER THE RESULTS!

Best wishes to your success!

Sean

Sean Callahan is the owner and founder of http://www.RealEstateMarketingNerds.com and has worked with thousands of real estate websites and agents over the past 8+ years. He is a former seminar speaker for The Learning Annex in San Diego and a webmaster for his 10+ websites featuring vacation rentals and hotel reservations.

# posted by online-classifieds39854 : 5:27 AM